Monday, 14 March 2016

Demonic Rage - Omen of Doom

DEMONIC RAGE - Omen of Doom (OLD TEMPLE - CD 2016)

Demonic Rage really fuckin blew
my head off last year, when I’ve listened to their so expected “Venomous Wine
from Putrid Bodies” album. This band is insane and together with Unaussprechlichen
Kulten, Godless and Diabolical Messiah is now my favourite death metal commando
from the mighty Chile. Sad thing about Demonic Rage is that they released quite
many demos, splits, etc, but it’s impossible to find most of them. But Old
Temple comes with help and decided to unleash killer compilation called “Omen
of Doom”, which would bring together songs from quite few hard to find older
Demonic Rage releases. I can only praise them for such decision. So, this CD
has songs from such releases as "The Occult Formula to Desecrate
Souls" EP 2011, "Sulphuric Congregation Towards the Holocaust of All
Sacred and Holy" demo 2010, "The Anguish's Doomaelstrom" demo
2008, "Demo # 2" 2006 and some more mainly rehearsal recordings. All
together, we have 20 tracks with 73 minutes of utterly massive, gloomy death
metal.

Obviously there is huge
difference in sound quality between all these releases. Some of them sound
absolutely killer, some lack that massive, crushing, obscure sound, but have a
decent production to say least. But you couldn’t expect it to be different, if
we have some great studio stuff next to rehearsals recordings, all done within
ten years or more. Luckily most of the stuff, which is on “Omen of Doom” sounds
killer, so I never had a huge problem with it. And definitely Demonic Rage
music should be a perfect offer for all those, who praise bands such as
Incantation, Funebrarum, Disma, Demilich, Disgrace, Morpheus Descends, Drawn
and Quartered and so on. So, we speak of rather slow paced (but with many fast
parts), insanely heavy and evil sounding death metal, with very low, demonic
vocals and not even a single moment of melodic, softer music. No, from start to
finish this is totally brutal shit. And since I like Demonic Rage a lot, this
compilation is a great feast for me, especially as I only own one release from
all those, which are included here – I’m talking about excellent "The
Occult Formula to Desecrate Souls" cassette EP.

Actually "The Occult
Formula…” songs are surely the best, including killer Profanatica cover or
fantastic songs from studio rehearsal session, especially total mindblowing “Ascending
Heresies in Blasphemy”. It’s so fast, so fuckin vicious and brutal and you
gonna low it. It’s also very short song, but later you have a real monster
called “Desecrating the False Divinity”, which is almost nine minutes long
crusher. Yes, definitely all five songs from "The Occult Formula…” tape are
the best stuff on this CD, also because the production of it is killer. “Sulphuric
Congregation…” is also really damn good, even if it contains just two songs. But
the same I can say about “The Anguish's Doomaelstrom” demo or “Demo #2” from
2006. The sound quality goes lower with demo recordings from 2004 and 2003, but
it surely doesn’t spoil the listen anyway. I only don’t like one live song from
this CD, but that one ends the album, so I can always skip it.

So, very good compilation from
Demonic Rage here. “Omen of Doom” is huge portion of monstrous, sepulchral
death metal, with various quality, but mainly with the great stuff. So I
strongly recommend them. Get their full length album (which actually contains
many of these songs, obviously recorded again with even stronger sound), if you
don’t have it yet and get this compilation also. And support them!